As you will remember, the room in which John Webster slept was at a corner of the house, upstairs. From one of his two windows he looked out into the garden of a German who owned a store in his town but whose real interest in life was the garden. All through the year he worked at it and had John Webster been more alive, during the years he lived in the room, he might have got keen pleasure out of looking down upon his neighbor at work. In the early morning and late afternoon the German was always to be seen, smoking his pipe and digging, and a great variety of smells came floating up and in at the window of the room above, the sour acid smell of vegetables decaying, the rich heady smell of stable manure and then, all through the summer and late into the fall, the fragrant smell of roses and the marching procession of the flowers of the seasons. John Webster had lived in his room for many years without much thought of what a room, within which a man lives and the walls of which enclose him like a garment when he sleeps, might be like. It was a square room with one window looking down into the German’s garden and another window that faced the blank walls of the German’s house. There were three doors--one leading into a hallway, one into the room where his wife slept, and a third that led into his daughter’s room. One came into the place at night and closed the doors and prepared oneself for sleep. Behind the two walls were the two other people, also preparing for sleep, and behind the walls of the German’s house no doubt the same thing was going on. The German had two daughters and a son. They would be going to bed or were already in bed. There was, at that street end, something like a little village of people going to bed or already in bed.